I wanted to give you all a brief summary of updates to the shadow class (formerly the ninja). First of all, lets get it out of the way, they no longer have the ability to instantly kill with assassinate! I know this will be a deal-breaker to some of you and make you want to steer clear of playing the class, but if you are a long-time fan of all ninja and martial arts stuff, I think you will find everything they have GAINED will be more than worth it.

Preface: Background has changed. The shadow class now begins in the "grand thalos" area, past the void. What that means is they begin in the future. To be added, at a later date, is some training mobs and some simple quest where Xanthak flees from Thalos THROUGH TIME into modern medieval Serin. The shadow class are martial artists that tagged along afterwards to vanquish this lord of undeath.
TLDR: The shadow class are time-travelling ninjas.

1. ninjitsu. At level 5 you gain an ability that lets you specialize in a weapon and grants your character a "ki" bar. (like monks chii. its actually the exact same concept but flavored differently). The ki bar gives you access to some new stuff immediately and is required for later skills.

you can build ki fast by using mana. or by using the "ninjitsu healing" ability which is built into the ninjitsu skill. you can also build it by using some of the skills that actually are shadow-only, like caltraps, nerve pressure. i would like to go through these skills, figure out what makes sense to generate and consume ki, and gate them that way, but I'd like someone else to make that list for me.

ninjitsu healing is like a cure light - gives hp and ki.

ninjitsu ghostwalk needs to be toggled. it lets you dodge stuff you normally wouldnt have, costing ki, so youre a bit tankier while you have ki. if you use it. it also lets you hide and sneak through ANY room in all of serin. obviously, this costs ki and you'd run out very quickly.

ninjitsu tactics (i.e. shadow tactics) is a damage bonus that consumes ki. it also needs to be toggled, and you cannot use it at the same time as ghostwalk

2. throw

shurikens are now thrown from inventory and now hit all targets you are fighting. they also apply a nice damage bonus from ninjitsu tactics. its definitely a goal of mine for every player of shadows to LOVE these. Using throw is a useful way to generate ki, so the in-combat ki problem is solved (which is about when the fights are getting so long that you wil be hurting for one).

3. spectral sight

this is a ki-required vision skill that lets you see ANYBODY (except cloaked imms) however having it in use will drain your ki per second, so use it wisely.

4. shadow arts

coming up at level 35. This is the same level as the assassinate nerf. the shadow arts skill grants you access to five (!) new skills, for example:

burst of speed - lets you run faster than anyone, although if you do anything except move it will interrupt
shadow machine - lets you convert your ki into attacking faster

I will let you read the helpfile for the rest of these, but let me know if there are any questions.

5. forgotten arts

In very high levels, there are now "art of chameleon" "art of phoenix" etc a bunch of "ultimate" shadow spells that consume an assload of mana and do really special things. Our imms favorite is art of the condor. YMMV.

6. Assassinate. Just a couple quick words on this, for people who are looking for more information. Besides kill, it does everything it used to do, and now also gives the shadow the max mark of shadow on his target and a full ki bar immediately.

To be clear, the over-arching theme of the shadow class is to be a hybrid of a thief and a dark-knight, with some monk elements thrown in. Generally speaking, I was looking for a class that (A) puts out nice *melee* damage, and (B) reduces the effectiveness of their opponents by debuffing them (e.g. caltraps nerve). the mark of shadow is the centerpiece that this all exists around._________________AR is on TwitterFacebook

Last edited by Davairus on Sat Apr 09, 2016 8:26 pm; edited 3 times in total

So, what exactly does mark of shadow do, besides 'causing the opponent to lose focus'. Does it mean there are thing they won't be able to do properly?_________________Hit Points: Anything more than none means I'm ready for action, baby

also, does using the ninjitsu skills help improve ninjitsu? Or does that rely on ninjitsu building skills outside of it?_________________Hit Points: Anything more than none means I'm ready for action, baby

I guess maybe keep thieves the way they are right now, but maybe give shadows an alternate form of hide that is unaffected by adrenaline but requires a constant small upkeep of either ki or mana to maintain? Since both require either fighting, sleeping or meditating (all of which bring you out of hiding) that would mean shadows would not be able to stay hidden indefinitely.

That way hiding would be a reliable means of escaping from combat, without being overpowered. You could still counter it just by waiting them out, and when their forced out of hiding they would be low on mana and thus vulnerable.

i've decided to make mark of shadow increase the groups damage by up to 10% for fully stacked (that's a unique effect - nothing else in game does this), and i also reworked throw so that it isn't an AOE anymore and shurikens will apply marks of shadow. currently tweaking shadow tactics ratio as it seems more mana hungry than I intended, will fix this before moving onto the other things I have been wanting to address_________________AR is on TwitterFacebook